Poker Training

Four Bad Things Amateurs Say

Elite professional players are much better than amateurs. That much everyone knows. What many amateurs don’t know, however, is that elite players use almost a completely separate strategic vocabulary from amateurs. In other words, amateurs and elite pros think about the game in completely different ways — and obviously the amateurs’ way frequently doesn’t measure up. Here are four bad things that amateurs say when they talk about hands that you’ll never hear from an elite pro. 1. “I put him on ace-king.” Amateurs say this one constantly, and it’s almost always completely wrong. Ace-king, specifically, isn’t the problem. You could substitute any other hand for ace-king, and it’s just as bad. Amateurs tend to oversimplify the game, and this is one of the big ways they do it. When they are hand reading, they focus on just a single possible hand to the exclusion of all others. Then they ...